Published: June 3, 2003

Confederate battle flags flew again Sunday over graves of about 700 Southern soldiers and their wives at the Confederate Memorial State Historic Site in Higginsville, where the flag was abruptly ordered down in January. The battle flag is still absent from the main pole at the historic site, but volunteers, with state approval, placed smaller flags on all of the graves on May 24. At the behest of Gov. Bob Holden's office, the director of the State Department of Natural Resources had ordered the flags to come down in Higginsville. Missouri was a slave state but did not join the Confederacy.